Holocaust Collection Speeches
Rev. John E. Brooks, S. J. - Dedication Welcome -
May 11, 1979
Holocaust Collection Speeches
Rev. John E. Brooks, S. J. - Dedication Welcome -
May 11, 1979
Your
Excellencies, Bishop Flanagan and Bishop Harrington, distinguished members
of the academic community, and friends: It is my extraordinary privilege
and pleasure this afternoon to welcome so many of our friends and guests
to the College of the Holy Cross. In particular I extend a warm word of
welcome and profound thanks to:
- Mr. Charles E. F. Millard, chairman, President and chief executive officer of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of New York, and chairman of the board of trustees of Holy Cross, Father Donald R. Campion, S.J., a member of the National Jesuit Conference in Washington, D.C., and a former member of the Holy Cross board of trustees,
- our distinguished speaker, Elie Wiesel, a man who, more than any other single writer of the postwar years, has educated our generation to the absolute need not only to remember, but continually to confront the anguish and mystery of the Holocaust,
- and finally to my dear friends, Frances and Jacob Hiatt, a couple who have for many years generously served the Worcester Community, and who have effectively taught us all by their example the common responsibility we have as Jews and Christians to keep alive, before the half-despairing world of our day, a sense of God's transcendence, His holiness, and His utter trustworthiness when all else fails.
Today
marks a very special moment in the 136-year history of this Jesuit College,
for, in response to the Jesuit vocation which earnestly bids us to labor
unstintingly for the promotion of justice, we take this occasion to join
other Christians and Jews in truly making our own the words inscribed on
the international memorial sculpture at Dachau - " Never Again."
And
we do this by proclaiming to our entire constituency - to our students,
faculty, administrators, alumni, benefactors and friends - that the Holocaust
is a turning point for mankind, an event so cataclysmic that it sears human
history into two sharply demarcated ages, and that it is something that
happened to Christians as well as to Jews. As the church historian Franklin
Littell has reminded us, the Holocaust " remains a major event in recent
church history - signalizing...(that) Christianity itself has been 'put
to the question.' "
In
dedicating the Joshua and Leah Hiatt Wings in memory of the victims of
the Holocaust, the college of the Holy Cross acknowledges the centrality
of the Holocaust in modern religious experience, and strives to teach that
the Holocaust was not an abstract injustice that defiled, tortured and
killed six million Jews. The origins of injustice are in the minds and
hearts of men and women, and justice will come into the world only when
the unjust persons change their ways and are moved to love of neighbor.
In
this spirit, I conclude my remarks by reading a telegram received from
Vatican City on the occasion of today's dedication. Addressed to Father
John E. Brooks, S.J., College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts,
the telegram reads:
" On the occasion of the dedication of the Hiatt Wings in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, I happily send congratulations and good wishes. Studies related to the ordeals and sufferings of Jewish people will help bring Christians and Jews more closely together for the mutual service to and promotion of human rights among all human beings."
- Signed: Jan Cardinal Willebrands, President of the Vatican Commission on Religious Relations with Judaism
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Write to: Fr.
Vincent A. Lapomarda (vlapomar@holycross.edu) with comments or questions.
Last updated April 8, 1999 Copyright
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